strangetrip | Let's measure our.... Egos (closed to Peter)

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Let's measure our.... Egos (closed to Peter)

Peter was the one who wanted this fight. Alec would totally use this as his excuse even though, yes, he was technically the adult and sure, he could say no to the whole thing. But the kid needed to learn he didn't know everything and that there were plenty of people here who could help him get better. The kid needed to learn to stop hiding behind the 'I'm a superhero so therefore I can do everything' and learn help is... Helpful.

And, okay, yes. Alec wanted to win, too.

So Alec stood in the parking lot at the allotted time demanded by the 15 year-old Spiderman and waited casually with his hands in his pockets, though he was keenly aware of his surroundings in case the kid wanted to start off with a big surprise.

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"Whoa!"

There's no mistaking Peter's look of bewilderment when Alec suddenly rolls his ankle and pulls out. He's going to have to work harder to try and get him really pinned down, especially if he can just pull himself out of it like that.

Before he knows it, Alec's trying to get behind him, and Peter has to circle to try and keep the other man in front of him.

Boxers manage to make this look surprisingly easy, but when you're trying to block a flurry of blows while also dispensing them, it's not nearly as easy as the circle-and-occasional-jab method he saw them use on TV.

"If you're trying to teach me a lesson," Peter begins, "shouldn't you explain what you're trying to do?"

If Alec could read minds - and what a scary thought that would be - he'd have told Peter that spraining your own ankle wasn't easy. And then he'd tell Peter he did a stint as a professional cage fighter.

Alec tilted his head just a little and then jumped up into the air. His lips pressed tightly together, ignoring the pain. In the air he came back down quickly with two punches.

Lesson number 1 kid, not everyone monologues their plans.

Peter manages to block the first one, but the second comes down on his face, and for a second there, he doesn't see anything at all.

But somehow, his eyes snap back into focus before he can fall to the ground, and he does a couple of backflips to position himself further away from Alec so he can have a second to recover.

Karen's voice chimes in from within his mask. "You appear to be having a hard time. Would you like my assistance, Peter?"

Annoyance floods Peter's body. "No, Karen. I got this!"

Then suddenly, Peter launches himself towards Alec, propelling himself into a forward flip with the hopes that his feet will manage to knock him down to the ground. All he needs to win this fight is to knock Alec prone long enough to hit him with the webshooters, right?

Right?

"Who the hell is Karen?" Alec had to wonder if he was so used to banter that maybe the kid made up an imaginary friend to talk to if his opponent was quiet one. It's enough a distraction that Peter his feet make contact and send him flying to the ground. Only grabbed hold of Peter's feet in an attempt to fling the kid over his head, using the momentum of his fall to do it.

"The AI --" Peter manages to get out as he struggles against Alec's grip around his feet, but the struggle proves futile; he manages to flip Peter over almost effortlessly. "--in my suit!"

Peter hits the ground, then quickly starts kicking with his feet to get Alec to relinquish his hold on him.

Alec let go of Peter's feet and did a kick up to be back on his feet, then turned around to face the kid. He should have attacked again, being prone made for an easier target in combat, but Alec, for some reason, couldn't quite bring himself to attack him prone.

"So you have someone helping you, huh?" But it didn't stop Alec from making what he said sound belittling to goad Peter.

Peter jumps backwards and onto his feet; he's back on the defensive.

"No, I don't!" Peter counters defensively. "I already told Karen to stay out of it!"

"I can confirm. All helper applications have been turned off at this time."

"Tell him that," Peter snips, as he closes in on Alec.

"Without special modifications, it is impossible for me to communicate with anyone who is not wearing your suit"

Peter lets out a long-suffering sigh, and throws a series of punches and kicks at Alec.

"You feeling winded yet?"

It was that kind of reaction that Alec was expecting from Peter. He really needed to get over this whole 'I don't need help' thing. All good soldiers knew you were stronger in a unit.

Some of the hits connected, but Alec fended them off. Peter also needed to stop letting his feelings dictate his fighting strategy.

"You really need to work on your anger, kid."

Alec went for a kick to Peter's inner knee, hoping to ground the kid again while bringing an elbow up to the side of his face.

The kick hits, and Peter falls to a single knee --

-- just in time for his Alec to strike the side of his face with his elbow.

Peter can taste blood in his mouth, but he can't bring himself to call Uncle. Not yet. Not when he's still capable of fighting.

"You can lecture me when you work on that yourself!"

He sends a line of webslinging fluid at Alec's chest -- and if he can manage it, he'll pull him closer towards him, then throw both of his feet at him before using the force of that impact to do a backflip.

Edited 2018-03-14 18:50 (UTC)

Alec had never seen the webbing be used this way and so had no way of anticipating. He felt his body lurch forward - a reminder of how strong the kid really was - and the feet made contact too.

Alec went flying into the side of the large, green garbage can meant for a garbage truck. He felt the pain run through his body like a flash. Ow.

He pushed off slowly from the sight indent on the can. "You think I have anger issues?" Interesting.

And damn, Alec was buying into Peter's banter.

"Nice trick."

"I never rammed my fist through a vending machine," Peter points out. "Or picked fights with 15-year olds."

Peter's waiting before he attacks again. He's not going to hit Alec when he's already down.

Alec straightened. "Dude. You're the one who asked for this." And he hadn't been mad at the machine, just reckless.

Still, Alec moved towards Peter. This time he slid towards Peter like Alec was a baseball player sliding to home plate. He was expecting Peter to jump. If he did, Alec would use his strength to pop off the ground and round house kick the kid in the stomach. If Peter didn't jump, he'd try to catch the kid as he fell and roll on top of him.

"Yeah, I asked for it," Peter says, defensively. "But I didn't ask for you to punch me that day in the hallway."

Alec's intuition was correct; Peter jumped nimbly to avoid him and was rewarded with a kick in the stomach; he's slammed back to the ground, the back of his head hitting hard against the gravel of the parking lot.

Peter peels himself off the parking lot. He's feeling worn down at this point (his healing ability doesn't work as quickly as Alec's does), but he can't bring himself to give up. Not yet. He can't let Alec win. Not when he said all that stuff about being competent, about being better than Alec thought.

But right now, it was getting hard to think tactics; his head was spinning. Peter shoots webbing at Alec's hands, hoping to temporarily bind them together like handcuffs. If he can just disable him, he could just win that way. Right?

Alec made a face when the kid hit the ground and had expected him to stay down. when he didn't, he inwardly sighed.

"You okay to keep going?" Alec had bruises, but hadn't taken a hit as hard as a few of Peter's.

His hands were bound, but Alec took this as an opportunity. He pulled hard, hoping to bring Peter to him. Normally he'd do a heatbutt, but he was worried about giving the kid a concussion so he moved to kick the kid in the stomach if he managed to get Peter flying in his direction.

"Yeah, I'm okay," Peter warbles defensively, even as he knows he is Very Much Not Okay. It

And earlier in the fight before he sustained a few injuries, Peter might have been able to held his own against Alec when he pulled at him, but now, he wasn't; despite his best efforts, he's pulled towards Alec, and knocked back to the ground when Alec kicks him in the stomach.

This time, Peter does not get up.

Well now he felt like an asshole. Alec sighed.

He pulled at the webbing and it took a lot of effort and the entire walk over to Peter to finally get some give in the weird substance.

He knelt. "Peter, you okay?" He worked his hands slowly out of the webbing. It was taking a long time - that stuff had some grit to it.

Alec's eyes ran over the kid, but it was hard to see anything while he was in the suit.

Peter doesn't immediately respond, still laid out on the ground. Then slowly, but surely, he starts to move with a groan, though he doesn't push himself off the parking lot quite yet.

"Uncle," he says, finally.

Alec was finally able to shed most of the fluid, but he had to give him credit for making this stuff. Much like real spiderweb, even when he was free, it felt like the stuff lingered. He wiped his hands on his pants.

"How are you feeling?" Maybe he should have went more easy on the kid.

Peter wouldn't have been happy if he thought Alec had gone easy on him. Yeah, he wanted to win, but he wanted to win with them both giving it their all. It'd be pointless if Alec held back.

"I'm fine," Peter reassures him, though the way he wobbles his feet seems to contradict his words. He wipes at his nose with the top of his hand sniffs audibly, then extends a hand to Alec to shake.

"Good -- good fight."

Alec shook Peter's hand, impressed, at least, that the kid didn't seem to be a sore loser.

"Let me get you a drink and some ice." For his face.

"I'll heal up pretty quickly," Peter says. "Though I'm not going to say no to some ice anyway." Healing quickly didn't mean that he didn't feel pain now.

"Come on." He gestured with his hand towards the bar and started to walk, assuming the kid would follow. He was never really good at the 'did we understand the lesson' part of the lesson. Max was better at that part, at least when it came to him.

At the bar, which seemed to be empty, he went behind and put some ice in a bag and then poured the kid some soda with, maybe with a little bit of vodka in it, but it was for the pain... probably. He pushed the mostly soda over to Peter and then went for some Whiskey for himself. "Your web stuff is pretty cool." He was sure Manticore would be all over that.

Peter presses the bag of ice against his swollen face; already a bruise was beginning to form over his cheek and eye. With any luck, it'd be healed up before Liz's next visit. The last thing he wanted was his girlfriend to think that he was part of a Madonna Inn fight club.

Peter pauses to think about it. Was Fight Club out before 2001? He wasn't really sure.

"Yeah," Peter says with enthusiasm, taking a sip of his drink. It tastes weird, but he doesn't really remark upon it; he's got a cut on the inside of his mouth that probably accounts for that weirdness. "I made it in chemistry class and it was a lot of trial and error. I have these little --" Peter gestures with his hand, forming a circle with his thumb and forefinger. "-- dispensers that I can swap out easily when I'm in combat. Mr. Stark was really impressed when I showed it to him."

He downed some of the whiskey, hiding a smile on his face when Peter drank the soda.

"And Mr. Stark is your...?" Not father, since Alec knew the kid's last name. Maybe it was his publicist or agent.

"Oh, yeah, I didn't tell you about him, did I? He's the guy who made my suit."

That doesn't seem like explanation enough, so Peter continues.

"Mr. Stark is --" Peter starts, then stops to think, and then continues: "Mr. Stark is this multi-billionare who moonlight as another superhero, Iron Man," he says. "He saw me on YouTube and just kinda showed up at my Aunt May's apartment one day and just started talking about my costume and then going to Germany, which I did, like you saw in the video I showed you."

And then Peter remembers.

"He was the guy in the car at the very end of that video," he says. "The one that's sitting next to me in the backseat."

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